Opposing fans and players have long speculated that the cozy confines of Cowboys Stadium—the $1 billion edifice replete with the world’s second-largest HDTV screen—has led to a less-than-hostile road environment.

Hall of Fame QB Troy Aikman, an SN contributor, told a Dallas radio station (via the Dallas Morning News) the problem has to do with perception.

“I think for a large part—and the fans don’t want to hear this—a lot of the people that attend sports in this town, they’re there because it’s kind of just a place to be seen,” Aikman said. “I’ve always said Dallas isn’t so much a sports town as it is a winner’s town.”

Aikman’s comments suggest the new stadium is only part of the issue, which was magnified last week when Bears fans had their run of the joint in the fourth quarter of Chicago’s 34-18 win.

As the Morning News pointed out, Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall took to Twitter to say the game in Texas “felt like a home game.”

Long before there was Cowboys Stadium, though, there was Texas Stadium, a much more modest facility that housed some of the greatest NFL teams of all time. Still ...

“Texas Stadium really wasn’t that different,” Aikman said. “Having played playoff games in Texas Stadium, that stadium was rocking, it was great. ... But when we would play in Philadelphia, New York and walk out of the tunnel, I would have to be yelling at the top of my lungs for guys to hear me. And you get on the plane for the flight home and your head would be pounding, you wouldn’t have a voice, and that’s just the way that it was. There was no way you could go down there near the goal line and use hard count in an opposing stadium. And yet in Texas Stadium, teams did it all the time.”